Optimizing the Gig CX Economy

The rise of gig CX work

From food delivery to ride-sharing, and now CX, gig work is growing in popularity, on both sides of the paycheque.

The struggle to recruit at speed and scale that plagued the CX industry in 2022 shows no immediate signs of abating. Gen Z in particular, set to account for 27% of the global workforce by 2025, has no objection to job-hopping at will, even without a back-up plan.

With younger workers placing a premium on flexible leave and lateral career movement (not always upwards), employers are re-thinking their approach to hiring and retention.

Can the Gig Economy provide a short-term answer to the CX staffing challenges, one that benefits employers and workers? Is it perhaps the long-term solution, too?

Can the gig CX model solve the hiring crisis?

A 2022 article from CXM noted that agent attrition rates continue to hover at 30-45%, with an average tenure of one year. Anecdotally, we’ve heard of much more severe rates of attrition, with some outsourcers seeing 100% turnover year on year.

So here’s the kicker, a huge number of employees obviously already think of their contact centre job as a temporary gig. Is it time that CX executives and senior leaders within the outsourcing industry embrace this reality and create an infrastructure that meets it head-on?

We’re not suggesting that they abandon all hope of retaining star performers, just that leaning into an operational model that embraces flexibility and “on-demand” work could be a more effective approach.

After all, it’s easier to row in the direction the water flows.

WfH/BYOD & Gig CX: The perfect combo

WfH, once a trend but now a pillar of CX, goes hand in hand with the gig landscape. The infrastructure built to support the world’s overnight shift to remote work has meant that highly-skilled professionals can be air-dropped into production at short notice from the comfort of their home office.

A recent Flexjobs survey reported that 58% of employees prefer to work remotely. And the younger you drill down into the demographics, the higher that figure rises. So if you can decentralize your on-demand workforce, you increase the pool of talent available and willing to take on temporary gigs at short notice.

But WfH aside, there’s another ingredient to making the gig CX model really sing; BYOD.

We make no secret of our support for BYOD, particularly for CX providers where margins are notoriously tight in the competition to win contracts. The never-ending cycle of buying, shipping repairing, replacing, recovering corporate devices is one of the industry’s biggest cost-sinks.

A gig CX model that relies on WfH agents, or even hybrid, needs to be built around BYOD. Otherwise, the logistics of shipping and recovering devices quickly becomes a nightmare. It just doesn’t make sense to ship a laptop to a temporary worker, with no guarantee you’ll get it back.

The volume of laptops you’d need in storage at any given time to ensure you’re covered would be an enormous, year on year CapEx investment.

BYOD eliminates that cost in one stroke.

Getting gig CX agents into production quickly is key

Ride-sharing and food delivery apps have baked gig work into the fabric of their operations. The barrier to entry for a worker is very low (what more do you need beyond a bicycle or a car), and some basic training (typically self-serve training) the worker is ready to go.

It’s the ease of starting work that really appeals.

Now, of course, the skillset needed to taxi people around or deliver food are different to the soft skills needed to provide award-winning customer experiences over the phone or online. And the level of training, and the specifics, necessary to successfully handle calls will vary from client to client. So the cx provider needs to host training classes.

Talk to people involved in the hiring and onboarding of new employees and you’ll hear a common refrain; 50% no-shows on day of training (some are reporting as high as 80% no-shows).

So what’s happening there? In the majority of cases it’s pretty simple to work out-they got a better offer. They got a quicker option.

This is where BYOD can be a huge asset. Enabling employees to use their own devices is an effective one way to fast track new hires and get them into production quicker.

Securing the Gig CX Economy

ThinScale is the industry leader in securing WfH and hybrid deployments for gig CX providers. Talk to us today about protecting and optimizing your IT infrastructure for both corporate-owned and BYOD/untrusted devices.

• Massive cost reductions on hardware
• Faster pre-production & onboarding for agents
• Seamless delivery of on-demand workspaces
• Eliminates need to deliver and recover corporate devices at short notice